Five metro area teams prepare for semifinal football round Friday

Since two of his players’ fathers are Saints assistants, Mandeville Coach Guy Lecompte probably could have scored tickets to Monday’s game.

“What game?” Lecompte asked in all innocence Monday morning. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know they were playing.”

Such is the tunnel vision for a coach whose team has made it to the semifinal round of the playoffs, especially for the first time in school history.

“It’s a great feeling,” said Lecompte, whose team travels to West Monroe on Friday for their Class 5A game. “But you want to keep winning so you work and work until you get a game plan in place.

“I don’t think you can put a clock on it. I’m not much on sleeping right now anyway.”

Mandeville is one of five Metro area teams still alive in the semifinals – Karr in 4A (vs. Lutcher), St. Charles in 3A (vs. Parkview), John Curtis in 2A (vs. Evangel) and West St. John in 1A (at Vermilion Catholic).

All of the others have reached this level multiple times, especially Curtis which is in the semifinals for the 16th straight year.

But, like, Lecompte, West St. John Coach Robert Valdez is in this situation for the first time.

To get some guidance, he’s been talking to a pair of his old Southern University teammates, Jabbar Juluke of Karr and Alden Foster of Amite, whose team plays at Marksville in the Class 3A semis.

“They said just because the stakes are higher you don’t change things,” Valdez said. “The main thing is to make sure your kids have their legs under them, so you don’t practice too hard.

“But we already do that in that we don’t go in full gear after the first week. Everybody’s tired and sore, but I haven’t heard anybody complaining.”

One thing better for everyone, but especially West St. John this week, is a return to a normal routine after playing the quarterfinals during Thanksgiving break.

For the Rams, last week meant a long trip to Haynesville, located just a few miles from the Arkansas border. The long ride home gave West St. John plenty of time to celebrate a 15-8 victory that advanced the Rams to the semifinals for the first time since 2007.

For Curtis, reaching this level of the semifinals might seem to make the players somewhat blasé, but facing Evangel certainly has their attention.

The two powerhouse programs have met in the last three 2A championship games plus the 2007 quarterfinals with the Patriots winning the first two and the Eagles the last two.

“Everybody – coaches and players alike – are tired both physically and mentally right now,” Curtis Coach J.T. Curtis said. “But when you’re playing a great program like Evangel with our history against each other, you kind of put that aside.”

St. Charles Coach Frank Monica has a history with both Curtis and Evangel, having lost to the Patriots in the 2009 semifinals and to Evangel in last year’s semis.

That game was game was played in Shreveport after the Comets had travelled to Winnfield the week before.

This time, St. Charles, which moved up to Class 3A this season, is at home for the third time in four weeks, a benefit of being undefeated and seeded No. 2, this time against the defending 3A champions.

“They sort of put the hat on us when we moved up,” Monica said. “We didn’t pay any attention to the rankings or anything, but it’s a credit to our team to have overcome adversity to put itself in this position.”

The Comets have had nine starters miss at least one game due to injury, including All-State return specialist Marcus Hall, who saw limited duty last week playing with a cast on his broken left wrist.

Monica said Hall may be capable of playing more this week, but running back Lazedrick Thompson, a Tulane commitment, is still out with a knee injury and will again be replaced by freshman Austin Weber.

Back at Mandeville, a high level of preparation has helped carry the Skippers to a pair of close victories in the first two rounds before last week’s 26-0 shutout of Ruston.

But that only earned the Skippers a trip to West Monroe, which has won seven state championships with five other trips to the finals over the past two decades.

As they did two weeks ago for the Parkway game in Bossier City, the Rebels will wait until Friday morning to depart,In a way, Lecompte said, that makes it better than a home game.

“We’ll be on the bus watching movies,” he said. “That’s probably more exciting than sitting one of my math classes.”